Chapter 1: The Lost Bottom
The sand was the exact temperature of skin, a fact Marcus noted because it was easier than thinking about the faint, sugary smell of Lily’s sunscreen or the way her knee brushed his as she dug her toes in. The beach sprawled around them in a brilliant, noisy chaos—shrieking kids, thumping music from a speaker, the endless shush and pull of the tide.
“I’m melting,” Lily declared, tilting her face to the sun. Her eyes were closed, freckles standing out across the bridge of her nose. “Seriously. A puddle. You’ll have to scoop me into a cup.”
“I’ll bring a straw,” Marcus said, the words coming out with an ease he only ever felt with her.
She grinned without opening her eyes, then sat up in one fluid motion. “Game time. First one in the water buys the post-beach fries.”
“That’s not a game, that’s a transaction you’ll lose,” he said, but she was already standing, shaking sand from her legs.
What happened next unfolded with a casual velocity that left Marcus’s brain several seconds behind his eyes. Lily hooked her fingers under the hem of her oversized tee shirt and pulled it over her head in a single, practiced motion. She was facing the ocean, her back to him and the bulk of the beach, but Marcus saw the smooth plane of her back, the delicate strap of her bra, the sun warming her skin. He blinked, his train of thought derailing completely.
Then the bra strap slipped down her arm. She unhooked it from the front, slid it off, and tossed it onto the pile with her shirt. His breath hitched, a sudden, quiet catch in his throat. He had never seen her naked. Not like this. Not in broad daylight with the world spinning on around them. The curve of her shoulder, the dip of her waist—it was all new, secret geography.
She bent, rummaging in her bag, and pulled out a scrap of cobalt blue fabric. She tied the bikini top around herself, her fingers quick and sure. She didn’t look at him. It was just a thing she was doing, changing for the water.
“You’re staring, Chen,” she said, still not turning. “Sand getting in your eyes?”
“Something like that,” he managed, his voice oddly tight.
She turned then, the tiny blue triangles of the top doing a breathtaking job of covering what they needed to cover. Her smile was the same as always, wide and unabashed. “Your turn. Unless you’re swimming in jeans.”
Before he could answer, her thumbs hooked into the waistband of her denim shorts. She shoved them down her hips and stepped out. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
The sight was a physical jolt. A brief, stark flash of auburn curls and bare skin before she shook out her bikini bottom and stepped into it, tying the strings at her hips with a little tug. The whole operation took maybe five seconds.
Marcus realized he had stopped breathing. He looked away, his face hot, and pretended a deep interest in a passing sailboat. The image was seared onto the back of his eyelids. He felt flustered, unbalanced, as if the sand had shifted under his towel.
“Okay,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Now you’re really staring. Race you. Last one in is a soggy waffle fry.”
She took off, her laughter trailing behind her as her feet slapped against the wet, packed sand at the water’s edge. He fumbled with his own clothes, pulling his shirt over his head, struggling out of his shorts to the board trunks underneath. By the time he was running after her, she was already waist-deep, shrieking as a cold wave hit her stomach.
“You’re a waffle fry!” she yelled, splashing him as he crashed in beside her.
The water was a shock, a bracing reset. He dove under a wave to clear his head, the cool silence of the green water a temporary refuge. When he surfaced, she was ahead, swimming with strong strokes toward the deeper, smoother swells past the break line. He followed.
They body-surfed for a while, laughing, getting tumbled. Lily was fearless, always taking the wave a second too late, going under and coming up sputtering and triumphant. “That one!” she’d yell, pointing at a growing swell. “This is the one!”
She paddled hard for it, just as it began to crest. Marcus saw her catch it, her body aligning with the force of the water, shooting down the face. It was a perfect ride. But the wave was powerful, pitching forward into churning foam. She disappeared into the whitewater.
He waited, treading water. A few seconds. He started to paddle toward where she went under. The swell passed, the water around him smoothing out.
She broke the surface ten yards further in, gasping, a wild laugh on her lips. The water was about chest-deep here, the undertow strong. She stood, wiping salt from her eyes. “Holy crap, that was—”
She stopped. Her smile faded into a look of dawning, comic horror. She looked down at the water around her hips. She patted her own sides, then reached behind her.
“Oh, no,” she said, quietly at first. Then louder, “No, no, no.”
The cobalt blue string of her bikini bottom was gone. The undertow had taken it. She was standing in the rolling surf, completely, utterly naked from the waist down.
For a frozen second, she just stood there, water streaming in gleaming paths over her hips and thighs. Marcus stared, his mind utterly blank. A child pointed from the shore. A man on a nearby float stopped paddling. A woman clutched her towel a little tighter.
The spell broke. Lily’s hands flew down in a futile attempt at coverage, her eyes wide with a mixture of panic and hysteria. She dropped back into the water up to her chin, scanning the surface for the lost scrap of fabric. It was long gone.
“Marcus,” she hissed, her voice a strained whisper. “Do not laugh. Do not move. What do I do?”
He swam toward her, putting his body between her and the bulk of the onlookers. He could feel the weight of their stares, the scattered giggles. “Just stay down,” he said, his voice low and calm despite the frantic beat of his heart. “We’ll back out slowly.”
“I can’t just walk out of here! My towel is a million miles away!”
“Okay. New plan.” He shucked off his own board shorts, the motion quick beneath the water. He held them out to her under the surface. “Here.”
Her eyes met his, and in them he saw a flash of profound gratitude, and something else—a vulnerability he’d never seen before. “What about you?”
“I’ve got my shirt on the sand. It’s long. Now take them.”
Their fingers brushed under the cool water as she took the offered shorts. She maneuvered them under the surface, a complex and awkward dance. She got them on, stood, and tied the drawstring tight. They were huge on her, baggy and dark, dripping.
“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay.”
She started wading toward the shore, head high, a flush creeping up her neck. Marcus followed, shirtless, in just his dark boxer-briefs. The stares were palpable now, a wave of attention they had to physically walk through. A teenage boy smirked. Lily ignored him, focusing on their towel like it was a life raft.
They reached it and she immediately wrapped herself in the oversized cotton, sinking onto the sand. She buried her face in her knees. Her shoulders were shaking.
“Lily?” he asked, crouching beside her, his own discomfort forgotten.
She lifted her head. She was laughing. It was a silent, shaking, tear-streaking laugh of pure mortified release. “Oh my god,” she wheezed. “Did you see that guy’s face? The one on the float? He looked like he’d been struck by lightning.”
Marcus felt his own tension break, a grin spreading across his face. “I think you broke the beach.”
“I lost my bikini in the Atlantic Ocean,” she said, as if stating a profound and ridiculous life fact. “And you… you gave me your pants.” She looked at him then, her laughter softening into something quieter, more real. The noise of the beach faded around them. “Thank you.”
He just nodded, unable to find words for the riot of feelings in his chest—protectiveness, a sharp, sweet ache, the dizzying memory of skin and sunlight and surf. He draped his damp shirt over his shoulders.
“We still getting fries?” she asked, her voice tentative.
“Absolutely,” he said. “But you’re buying. That was way more dramatic than just losing a race.”
She bumped her shoulder against his, and they sat there together, watching the next wave come in, waiting for the world to feel normal again. It didn’t, not quite. Something had shifted, washed up with the tide, and neither of them knew what to do with it yet.